


R/MASH4077 - Married straight guy [29M] afraid of being homophobic to gay tentmate [32M]

by Talls



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - there was Reddit in the 50's, Crack, Happy Ending, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, don't ask why I make the decisions I make, r/4077, suspend your disbelief and watch beej have a gay freakout on a wildly inappropriate medium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talls/pseuds/Talls
Summary: First things first, let me say that I’ve [29M] never thought of myself as being discriminatory before. ”Hawkeye” [32M] has been my tentmate for one year, which is how long I’ve been in Korea, and I pretty much knew upfront about him being, well, a bit bent. He’s brazen and upfront about it in a way that isn’t dishonest, but that nobody takes all that seriously. I've never had a problem with that kind of behavior before - I'm actually unusually tolerant of it compared to most of my buddies back home.The problems started because of this: Hawkeye brings guys to the Swamp (our tent) sometimes. At the start I thought I was okay with it, since it’s really not my business who he sleeps with. He’s usually discreet enough about it that I don’t see/hear anything I wouldn’t want to see/hear from anyone else, but for some reason I’ve started feeling weird if I even see him with other guys. I’ve even gotten uncomfortable and upset when I’ve spotted him flirting with our camp chaplain - a Catholic priest!
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 79





	R/MASH4077 - Married straight guy [29M] afraid of being homophobic to gay tentmate [32M]

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year!! this is how I choose to usher in 2021 :) 
> 
> if you're not already aware of where this is from -- [ here is ](https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/straight-guy-worries-hes-homophobic-gay-roommate-ends-falling-love/) a link to a breakdown of the reddit post this is based on! 
> 
> I mostly wrote this ludicrous nonsense for me but I hope you enjoy it!!

First things first, let me say that I’ve [29M] never thought of myself as being discriminatory before. I know what society has to say about the subject, but I had a close friend in high school who wasn’t exactly the straightest arrow around (he was very invested in theater -- we spent a lot of time running lines together). We made it through some tough times together, and I never felt weird about him being interested in guys. In fact, he and a few others have told me I'm actually unusually tolerant of it compared to most of my buddies back home. So all of this is coming out of nowhere.

Hawkeye” [32M] has been my tentmate for one year, which is how long I’ve been in Korea, and I pretty much knew upfront about him being, well, a bit bent. He’s brazen and upfront about it in a way that isn’t dishonest, but that nobody takes all that seriously. It’s pretty amazing the stuff he can get away with by virtue of sheer force of personality. Almost as soon as we met, we became friendly enough with each other that we could even joke about it, as in, sometimes he’ll pretend to flirt with me and I’ll pretend to flirt back. I’m straight and married and he knows that, but I don’t feel threatened by him flirting with me and he says most straight guys do. In fact, we’ve gotten so close that half the time we’re playacting as a married couple, stealing each other’s socks, eating every meal together at the mess tent, bickering constantly, talking about our fantasies, napping at the same time, etc.

The problems started because of this: Hawkeye brings guys to the Swamp (our tent) sometimes. At the start I thought I was okay with it, since it’s really not my business who he sleeps with. He’s usually discreet enough about it that I don’t see/hear anything I wouldn’t want to see/hear from anyone else, but for some reason I’ve started feeling weird if I even see him with other guys. I’ve even gotten uncomfortable and upset when I’ve spotted him flirting with our camp chaplain - a Catholic priest! 

I don’t know when it started but one time that really sticks out to me is when I came home early from a post-op shift and saw him and a Supply Sergeant who came for a poker game making out on his cot. I don’t know how to describe what it was like to see that, except that for a moment I felt so bad I thought I was going to throw up. Hawkeye was embarrassed (he didn’t think I’d be back for a while), but I told him it was okay since I was embarrassed too.

I felt bad for being as disgusted as I was, since there’s NO good reason for me to have a reaction like that. I thought maybe they just caught me by surprise and that’s why I reacted so strongly, but it turned out it wasn’t a one-time thing. After that, every time he has a guy over (not that often, but every once in a while, usually he sticks to nurses) I just start feeling like shit and wishing that guy would leave. I can’t stop thinking about what these guys might have done to him even though I don’t want to imagine that. It makes me really uncomfortable and grossed out. And these are just guys he fools around with, I don’t know what I’d do if he ends up getting an actual boyfriend. The closest equivalent is his old tentmate before me -- let’s call him Trapper. He and Hawkeye used to spend all their time together just like we do now, except I know for a fact their relationship wasn’t strictly platonic, even though Trapper was married. Once I thought about the fact that they probably had sex on my cot and I couldn’t sleep for a week until I finally broke and requisitioned a new one. Hawkeye still doesn’t know what happened that week, even though he asked a billion times.

Hawkeye has started to notice and it’s affecting our friendship. The other day I came home right when some guy was about to leave, and the guy tried to be polite to me but I ended up being rude to him (don’t remember what I said, but it was really obvious I was pissed). When the guy left, Hawkeye asked me why I was being an asshole. I didn’t know what to say, but then he asked if I had a problem with him sleeping with other guys. I said no. For some reason that pissed him off more and he said I can’t complain since apparently I spend all my time talking about my wife and rubbing our relationship in his face. I agreed with him and told him I was just having a bad day and I don’t care who he sleeps with, but he looked more upset and told me he’s going to our friend Margaret’s tent to cool off. I said okay. When he was leaving for some reason he casually said, “and you’ll be okay if I sleep with the enlisted men as long as I don’t do it in our tent, right?” Or something like that. I told him it’s none of my business what he does at someone else’s place, but when he said that I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He didn’t show up later that night even though we were supposed to do a crossword I found for us together. He’s never blown me off before and it made me feel like shit, but I know part of it was my fault since I made him feel like I was judging him for sleeping with guys. Now he’s acting like nothing happened but I’m worried I might mess things up if it happens again. I want to keep him as a friend, but he’d be hurt if he knew that whenever I think about him with other guys it disgusts me.

How do I deal with this? I’ve never been bigoted before but I’ve suddenly developed some kind of fixation where just the idea of my tentmate’s sex life makes me uncomfortable. And I don’t react like this to other gay people either, it’s just Hawkeye. I don’t know if this means I’m only okay with gay people as long as I’m not living with them or what. Does anyone else have experience with this? I want to get over myself and stop whatever this is, but if I can’t I’m going to have to switch tents or something since the last thing I want to do is hurt Hawkeye, and if I stay here and keep automatically judging him for his lifestyle that’s what’s going to happen.

 **tl;dr** : Tentmate is into men, I am not but I thought I was okay with that until I realised I feel crappy when I see him with other guys and it’s started to affect our friendship. How to deal with this/stop being such a dick?’

 _CallMeRadar comments_ : ‘Are you sure that weird feeling isn’t jealousy…? i mean, this only seems to revolve around Hawkeye specifically.’

 _OP response_ : ‘I thought about that, but I don’t know what I’m meant to be jealous of. He definitely has a more active sex life than I do, especially since my wife is at home and I have no interest in sleeping around on her with the other nurses, but reacting like this to something like that seems really strange and irrational.’

 _MajorMargaret comments_ : ‘You ninny - have you considered you don’t like seeing Hawkeye with other people because you want his attention to yourself?’

\--

The day after I wrote this up, I called my wife Peg [28F] and I talked to her about this. She was silent for almost five minutes before she called me an oblivious fink and said it sounds like I’m in love with Hawkeye - the same conclusion some of you came to in the original post.

Anyway, she talked me through it and we confirmed I’m not as straight as I thought I was, which is to say, not at all. We’re gonna get a divorce when I get home, but we’re going to split custody of our daughter evenly - she doesn’t want to punish me for this (no wonder I married her, she’s a wonder). She also pointed out something in my original post, where I said the more I tried to reassure Hawkeye I didn’t mind who he slept with, the more he got upset. Also: the way he brought Peg into it - I just thought he was understandably mad with me for being an asshole about his love life, but Peg thought it sounded like maybe Hawkeye wanted me to be jealous? We moved on from that topic pretty quickly, though, since I couldn’t really handle the implications of that when I’d JUST started to understand that I like this guy.

The next few days were mostly me sitting on my ass trying to wrap my head around everything. I was scared of messing up our friendship and losing him, but I was even more scared that I might just let this pass without saying anything and then he gets a boyfriend and I have to see him with another guy…etc. Because if that happened I would probably have to leave anyway, since as we’ve established, I’m not great at dealing with him being with other guys.

Probably could have planned it better, but I told him. Right after a camp-wide movie night, if anyone’s interested, since nothing says romance like a cheesy western we’ve seen upwards of thirty times in the past month alone. I told him I’ve been such a jerk because I was jealous. I don’t think he got what I was getting at because he just laughed a little and said I didn’t have to be jealous since I was happily married and if I wanted to be unhappily married, I was enough of a catch that I wouldn’t have a problem finding someone to spend my nights with. No clue how I explained, it’s a blur. Luckily he saw how nervous I was so he knew I was serious.

We talked. Long story short: all that flirting was real, but Hawkeye didn’t have any hope of it going further because of me being a married “straight” guy. So he’s been trying to get over me. He laughed really hard when I told him about how I mistook my jealousy for homophobia, and he teased me by saying he’d never expected me to be the jealous type. Then again, we both ended up laughing a lot out of nervousness and awkwardness. I’ve never seen him like that before since he’s usually pretty confident. In the end we agreed to maybe try something out, and we kissed. Never kissed anyone with stubble before, so…interesting experience, but also really good. (Plot twist: it turns out I don’t have any problem with Hawkeye kissing guys if it’s me he’s kissing.)

Since then we’ve kind of been easing into the whole dating thing, I guess? I know this place is wary about roommate relationships and I get why, but it’s been great so far. We had our first proper date on the edge of the minefield last weekend and it was incredible, though a bit weird since we’ve done that a thousand times already and this time there was a new context. At home we still do our normal thing, but sometimes we get distracted. Last night I almost outed us in front of our other roommate because I had to kiss him and we got kind of carried away, haha. We’re taking the whole sex thing slow though since I’ve never done anything with another guy before, but he’s being really patient with me.

I’m a little worried about coming out to my family and my other friends, especially since this is almost as new for me as it would be for them. Hawkeye has said he doesn’t expect me to jump out of the closet right away (he was really surprised when I got the divorce, like almost too surprised), especially considering the world we live in, but if this lasts the war, then I’m not going to keep him a secret or anything.

So…we’re trying. And I am not a bigot, and nobody needed therapy. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I was this happy, and I never would have expected this when I made that first post. It’s a good thing some of you picked up on the actual problem and tried to get it through to me despite me being an oblivious fink, so…thanks, guys.’

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know if you had a good time with this! kudos and comments make my year!


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